"We get thousands of checks from thousands of people and we just wouldn't have any way of knowing something like that is happening."
Mayor Boughton's response to his acceptance of James Galante alleged bundled campaign contributions
UPDATE: Some of the links to Boughton's PAC reports are no longer good. I'll fix the links later this weekend.
Phew, that was a lot of work
Okay, I think I'm finally finished. If I'm correct, this should be a complete listing of every single one of Mayor Mark Boughton's campaign finance statements. Now I could be missing one or two but I think this is everything.
A big round of thanks foes out to all the people who help make this report a reality. It wasn't easy hunting down all of these reports (trust me) but now that everything is out in the open, we can finally get to the details.
Download the files and let me know if you see anything that raises your eyebrow. As the Fairfield County noted, we already found some rather interesting donations from April 2003 that look oddly a lot like Galante's bundled donations that were given to the mayor's PAC in October 2003. Our final analysis entitled "The money trail report", will highlight several interesting items including:
• Democratic town committee members who donated to Boughton's campaign,
• An family-owned immigrant newspaper that has donated (along with immediate family members) over 600 dollars in in-kind advertising contributions in late 2005 (NOTE: although the in-kind advertising contribution was received on 10.10.05, Boughton's campaign did not disclose the contribution until after the election against then Democratic mayoral candidate Dean Esposito on 01.10.06). The same business donated over 1,400 to Boughton during the 2007 campaign cycle (including 1,100 after the ICE ACCESS program was introduced in during the October Common Council meeting),
• Massive contributions from developers (including the infamous Dan Bertram of BRT) and finally
• Contribution from the main players who contributed to the worst episode in the history of Danbury: The James Dyer scandal of the 1980s.
Let's work together to expose the ugly truth. Enough reading...get to WORK!
Statement: 2nd Thurs. month Oct. 20th (COLLECTED A MASSIVE AMOUNT OF MONEY DURING THIS PERIOD). Date filed: 10.07.03, Period Covered: 07.01.03-09.30.03 (aprox.)
04.25.22 (RADIO): WSHU Latino group call on Connecticut lawmakers to open a Danbury charter school
06.03.22 (OP-ED): KUSHNER: "Career Academy ‘a great deal for Danbury"
On September 26, 2007, ten plaintiffs filed suit in response to an arrest of aday laborers at a public park in Danbury, Connecticut. Plaintiffs amended their complaint on November 26, 2007.
The amended complaint states that plaintiffs sought to remedy the continued discriminatory and unauthorized enforcement of federal immigration laws against the Latino residents of the City of Danbury by Danbury's mayor and its police department.
Plaintiffs allege that the arrests violated their Fourth Amendment rights and the Connecticut Constitution because defendants conducted the arrests without valid warrants, in the absence of exigent circumstances, and without probable cause to believe that plaintiffs were engaged in unlawful activity. In addition, plaintiffs allege that defendants improperly stopped, detained, investigated, searched and arrested plaintiffs. Plaintiffs also allege that defendants violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights when they intentionally targeted plaintiffs, and arrested and detained them on the basis of their race, ethnicity and perceived national origin. Plaintiffs raise First Amendment, Due Process and tort claims.
Plaintiffs request declaratory relief, damages and attorneys fees.